Dumping on the Tea Party

I apparently don't understand the superior "logic" of leftists and Democrats.

Let's set up what transpired during and immediately after the debt-ceiling dramatics of the past few weeks.

There have been six primary players:

1. President Barack Obama.

2. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

3. Unhinged leftists, whose primary goal is headlong expansion of the welfare state and stifling the dissent of anyone who opposes it.

4. Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner.

5. Tea Party activists, whose primary goals are constitutional adherence, fiscal sanity, and a better world for current and future generations.

6. The ratings agency people at Standard & Poor's (S&P), who entered the fray after the legislative dust had settled.

President Obama's role consisted of utterly failing to present a plan, pretending that the unsustainable wreckage he presented in February was still a viable plan (even though the U.S. Senate voted it down by a shocking 97-0), and insisting on a "balanced approach." Translated into harsh experience, a "balanced approach" is defined as: "I get new taxes now for promised cuts later which never materialize," or in short form: "Business as usual."

Harry Reid's role was to offer up nothing substantive until the final days (even that's being generous), and to ridicule anything passed or under consideration by Boehner's Republican House majority.

Unhinged leftists jerked around Obama during his alleged negotiations with Boehner, leaving everyone trying to bargain in good faith completely flummoxed.

Boehner's role was to resist tax increases at all costs, and to put up with Obama's noncommittal, goalpost-moving method of "negotiating." Eventually, he threw up his hands, walked away from Obama, and initially tolerated the passage of "Cut, Cap and Balance" (CC&B). If it had become law, CC&B would have reduced projected spending against the Congressional Budget Office baseline by the $4 trillion S&P said was necessary as a demonstration of both political seriousness and long-term financial viability. "Tolerated" may have seemed like a harsh word two sentences ago, but Boehner was recently quoted as saying that he got 98% of what he wanted in the legislation which passed. This is interesting, because tax increases arising from the so-called "super committee" are still not out of the question, and the $63 billion in reductions against the CBO baseline supposedly achieved in fiscal 2012 and 2013 are so puny. Am I to believe he'd be completely satisfied if he had gotten $65 billion?

Tea Party activists championed CC&B. For holding out for a better deal than Boehner's watered-down rewrite, they were demonized by so-called "friends" the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, and don't-get-it types like John McCain. Many activists were and still remain seriously displeased that Boehner -- admittedly stabbed in the back by microphone hogs in the Gang of Six and by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- so quickly discarded the only coherent plan which had a chance of enabling the country to avoid S&P's otherwise promised downgrade.